by Brodi Ashton
Raf cough-laughed.
“Why did you wake me up?” I said.
“You were about to miss the best part,” he said.
“How can anything beat that sermon?”
He didn’t answer as a line of altar boys dressed all in white filed in, the last one carrying a chain with a silver ball attached at the end. Smoke escaped through vents inside the ball and swirled above the boy’s head. I recognized him. It was Gabriel Martínez, the son of an Argentinian diplomat.
He swung the smoking ball back and forth, and as he passed the front row, our row, he arced the ball perilously close to our faces.
I flinched away. Why hadn’t anyone warned me church was dangerous? Were you considered more faithful if you didn’t flinch?
I was about to comment on it when a familiar odor reached my nose. I’d smelled it only once before, and that was at a bluegrass festival my mom took me to.
“Breathe it in, Pip,” Raf said.
The odor seemed to be emanating from the silver ball.
“Is that . . . is that . . .” I sniffed in what I’m sure was a most unattractive way. “Pot?”
“It is something of the cannabis family, that is certain,” Raf said. “Gabriel has a greenhouse in his basement.”
Giselle and Franco, who were on the other side of Katie, leaned forward in their seats, inhaling as much as they could. After a while, Giselle let her head fall onto Raf’s shoulder. Gabriel walked back and forth in front of us, his face a solemn mask, never betraying the fact that the holy incense burning inside his silver ball was not, in fact, incense.
Father Mannion looked on with a faint smile of approval. Was he high?
“Did I mention that Father Mannion lost his sense of smell due to nasal polyps?” Raf said.
My mouth hung open.
“Close your mouth, Pip. Inhale.”
“But I’ve never smoked pot,” I whispered, turning my head to see if anyone of the police variety was coming down the aisle.
“And you still haven’t. You’ve only inhaled.”
Pot in the church. Now I could see why no one missed Mass. But how was it that no one had gotten caught, either?
As if I’d asked the question out loud, Raf leaned over and said, “Gabriel’s dad has a good relationship with church security. It’s part of his distribution network.”
Distribution network? Those were charged words. Those were words around which a reporter could frame a story. Those were words rarely spoken on the record. That was the tricky thing about reporting. Unless you say “off the record” before the interview, anything is fair game. Normal people didn’t know that.
But I did.
In the stained glass interior of a cathedral, I’d found my first possible headline.
CANNABIS IN MASS . . . HOW DID ARGENTINIAN DIPLOMAT CONVINCE POLICE TO TURN THE OTHER WAY?
14
It was a headline, to be sure. But not enough for the kind of exposé I needed. Not only that, it was obvious Raf seemed to trust me enough that “off the record” went without saying. But it didn’t.
When Mass was over and we were all outside, a handsome couple was waiting. “Gigi,” the woman called out, waving to Giselle. It must’ve been her mom, but she looked too young. Giselle took Raf’s hand.
“See you around, Pip,” he said.
“Oh. Are you guys all going home? For . . . the day? And night?”
He shrugged. “Not sure. But we’ll catch up Monday, yes?”
“Yes.”
“Are you good to drive?”
“Yeah. I don’t feel anything.”
He smirked. “You might want to take a little walk anyway. See you later.”
I tried to mask my disappointment. As I walked away, I wobbled a bit. I grabbed the bag at my shoulder, as if it would steady me.
The pot had affected me more than I’d thought.
Raf and Giselle waved as I left.
I was disappointed on an investigative reporter front, but I sensed I was also disappointed in other ways. Ways I could feel inside my chest, just underneath my ribs. Ways that had to do with Giselle’s perfect face. So instead of letting myself explore those feelings (because every good reporter knows there’s no room for those kinds of feelings, those ones you feel in your chest under your ribs), I sat down on one of the benches lining the sidewalk and texted Charlotte.
Me: Guess what? Pot in the incense balls at Mass!
Charlotte texted back immediately.
Charlotte: Is that a euphemism?
I rolled my eyes.
Me: No! I went to Mass. There was pot in the little silver ball thingies they swing around!
Charlotte: You went to Mass??
Me: How is that the bigger question?
Just then, I caught Raf walking alone out of the corner of my eye. I looked up. Maybe now was my chance.
Me: brb
“Hey, Raf! ’Sup?” It came out loud and clumsy.
Raf stopped and smiled. “What did you think of Mass?”
His smile was sort of brilliant, and my breath caught a little in my throat. “It was interesting, to say the least.”
“Mass isn’t normally held on Saturday mornings, but Father Mannion knows none of us would show up on Saturday night. He likes to feel hip and brag about catering to the younger crowd.”
“Apparently,” I said.
Probably because of the pot, Raf seemed a little floaty. And slightly blurry around the edges. And a little distorted.
“But still beautiful,” I said, finishing the conversation I’d been having in my head.
“Huh?” Raf said.
“Oh, um . . . Mass. It was beautiful.”
“Okay.” He glanced at the ground and his hair did that perfect thing where it fell across his perfect eyes perfectly. I could see why he got in trouble with so many girls. If I were into perfect floppy hair, I would probably be affected by the floppage. But I wasn’t. Because I knew this was the pot talking. It was replacing Raf’s annoying habits with attractive ones, because pot can do that. This is why pot was dangerous. Pot made you irrational.
“So can I borrow your phone, or what?” I said.
He raised his eyebrows, as if the question was unexpected. “Weren’t you just texting on your own phone?”
He’d been watching. I scrambled. “I was, but then it ran out of all the batteries.” Yes, it was a lie, but not a bad lie, because it was in pursuit of a story.
Raf looked wary, but took his phone out of his pocket and handed it to me.
Now what? How was I supposed to find the password with him looking over my shoulder?
“Um, could you give me a little privacy?” I said. Raf didn’t move. “I need to text my brother about our upcoming Scrabble game.”
He looked to be suppressing a smile but turned away.
His phone was like mine, so it was easy to find the text messages. Once I did, I scrolled down past all the Giselles (okay, there was just the one Giselle, but she’d sent lots of texts, and maybe I clicked on one of them for a second) to a text sent to a group. It said:
SPAIN 15-11
Luchar contra el hombre
15-11. In America, that was 11/15. November 15th. That was next Saturday.
“Ha!” I said.
“What?” Raf said.
“I . . . just beat solitaire. Thank you.” I handed him back his phone and left him to go for a long walk. Because I really shouldn’t drive in my condition.
That night I told Charlotte about my detective work, and she came right over with some “educational material,” which consisted of a flash drive of clips from Christiane Amanpour making the Taliban talk and Joyce Latroy making dictators cry.
“You see how they use empathy as a tool?” she’d say.
“Look how she lets the silence fill the room,” she’d say.
“Nobody acts desperate,” she’d say.
“See how she tries to analyze the subject’s behavior? That’s a good opening. Everyone loves to
be analyzed.”
When we were done studying, we decided to visit the Post-Anon site.
“Ooh,” Charlotte said, pointing to a poem titled I Lost You. I clicked on it and read.
I am ugly without you to tell me I’m pretty
I am lost without your hand on my back
I am drowning in all of this space you now give me
I would do anything to get you back
“Love sucks,” Charlotte said.
“I couldn’t agree more.”
Around one in the morning, we fell asleep to the dulcet tones of the twenty-four-hour news channel.
15
The following Monday, I felt a little bad about my deception, but I had more digging to do.
Bob Woodward always said, “You get the truth at night, and lies during the day.” And he broke Watergate, so he knew what he was talking about.
That’s why I stole the code off Raf’s phone. So I could find the truth at night. At a DI party.
When I got to Professor Wing’s class, Raf saw me and smiled, and I swear somehow he’d gotten cuter since Saturday. He didn’t annoy me as much as he used to, and that realization annoyed me.
I sat down next to him. “Scale any monuments lately?”
“Nope,” he said. “But as soon as this heals”—he pointed to his brace—“I have plans for the Washington Monument.”
“Because it’s there?” I said.
“Naturally,” he said.
“You know, there are professionals who can help you curb your appetite for seeking thrills.”
“Why would anyone want to do that?”
I shrugged. “Survival? No broken bones?”
“That doesn’t sound like living.”
I shook my head and decided to try out Charlotte’s advice about analysis. “I have a theory about you.”
He raised his eyebrows. “I’m flattered you’ve given me so much thought. What’s your theory?”
“I think you do stupid stuff so you can feel.”
He scratched his head. “Feel what?”
“I don’t know yet.”
He nodded. “It’s not a very well-formed theory yet, is it?”
Professor Wing closed the door as the bell to begin class rang, and we didn’t get a chance to continue.
The next day, in chemistry, Professor Ferron was demonstrating what happens when sodium reacts with water. Raf and I were sitting in the front row of desks (his choice). And I was madly taking notes.
Raf wouldn’t need to borrow these notes. He was really good at chemistry, and he kept everything in his head. But he needed my help for the finagling of doohickies during labs. Not that my finger dexterity was something to write home about, but it was marginally better than that of a guy with a brace on his wrist.
Then again, who would ever write home about finger dexterity anyway? That was why it was important to steer clear of clichés, because what would the letter look like?
Dear Mom,
I met this boy who can pick up a single grain of sand between his thumb and forefinger! Dexterity!
Love, Piper
Dear Piper,
Marry that boy!
Love—
“What kind of notes are those?” Raf was reading over my shoulder. I’d started absentmindedly doodling the “letters to home” on my paper.
I swept the paper off my desk and got a fresh one out. “Nothing. Just practicing my shorthand.”
The crack of an explosion came from the front of the classroom. Professor Ferron had taken a tiny piece of sodium and dropped it in a petri dish of water. The class clapped unenthusiastically and ironically, and Professor Ferron took a bow. I liked Professor Ferron. He was simultaneously obsessed and unimpressed with science.
A knock came at the door, and the school secretary poked her head in, motioning for Professor Ferron. As he was momentarily preoccupied with whatever news she’d come to deliver, Raf leaned over toward me.
“Tell me, Pip,” he said, “do you think I can make it rain?”
“What?”
“Shall I make it rain?”
I rolled my eyes. “I know you think you can do anything, Rafael Amador, but I highly doubt you can control the skies.”
“Not the skies.” With the flick of his wrist, he took his water bottle and threw the water on the slightly larger lump of sodium on Professor Ferron’s desk.
I jumped out of my chair as a flash of light, much brighter and louder than the first, exploded.
Professor Ferron lunged from the doorway and threw a handful of sand onto his desk, and the bright light and crackling explosions stopped.
The entire classroom heaved a sigh of relief.
Then the fire alarm went off—much later than I would’ve considered safe. Maybe that could be my next exposé: “Why the Alarms Are Delayed at Chiswick Academy.” And then the sprinklers on the ceiling turned on. Streams of water pelted the desks.
Giselle held her backpack over her head. I wanted to tell her not to bother, because even with makeup streaming down her face, she still looked great. Other students would start wearing makeup streaming down their faces just to look as gorgeous as Giselle in this downpour.
The students rushed toward the door, and I realized that I wasn’t as wet as I should’ve been. Raf had been holding his folder above my head.
“And you thought I couldn’t make it rain,” he whispered.
16
Did I mention Raf held his folder above my head?
No. Because why would I? He’s just a story.
The school closed early because of the “incident,” and evacuated us all, which I was pretty sure was the reason Raf had done what he’d done.
I kept practicing writing the story of the explosion in my mind. It should’ve started out with a headline like “When the Privileged Get Bored: A Simple Lab Experiment Turns into an Explosion.”
But instead, the only headline I was coming up with was “Rafael Amador Holds Folder over Head of Scholarship Student.”
Maybe he was just trying to be nice. Or maybe he had seen the beginnings of my smeared makeup and thought, No more. Please, no more.
He probably wouldn’t have held his folder above my head if he’d known he was the focus of my exposé.
But for now, the exposé was still just in my head.
Once we were outside, I stood there awkwardly as Raf took a moment longer than necessary to lower the folder.
“What is wrong with you?” I said. “You could’ve burned the school down.”
He didn’t answer me. Instead, he took out a pack of gum (some foreign type, because I couldn’t read the label), popped a piece into his mouth, and balled up the wrapper. Then he held it between the thumb and forefinger of his left hand, and with his right hand closed his fingers around the paper, making a fist around the wrapper. Then, voilà, he opened his fingers and the wrapper had magically disappeared.
With his other hand, he pretended to take it out of my ear.
I rolled my eyes.
“I saw the wrapper the whole time,” I said. “It stayed in your left hand.”
“You’re just assuming that.”
“I’m not. Do it again, and switch hands or don’t, and I’ll tell you which hand it’s in.”
He did it again.
“Left,” I said.
He did it again.
“Left again.”
He did it again.
“Right.”
He sighed. And then he did it again.
“Left.”
“Hmm. Maybe it’s because I have a brace,” he said.
I shrugged. “I told you. I’m very observant.”
“You are. Has anyone ever told you you should be a reporter?” He smiled.
“So, back to the fire: What is wrong with you?”
He looked upward at the blue sky. “It’s too beautiful a day to be trapped indoors, wouldn’t you say?”
“Is that what you’re going to tell the judge? It was a beaut
iful day, so I burned down the school?”
“What judge?”
I sighed, frustrated and flustered. “Oh, yeah. Diplomatic immunity. No judge. No jury. No consequences. A lifetime surrounded by yes-people and nothing to show—”
He put his finger on my lips. “Can we stop with the prosecution?”
I glanced away. “Sorry. Habit.”
“You know, Pip, you have a bright future. There are plenty of stories of those who started with nothing and persevered to great success.”
“You think I have nothing?” My mind flashed to the food stamps in my kitchen.
He closed his eyes for a long blink. “Well, sometimes you act like the downtrodden.”
Ow.
He walked away.
“I don’t act like the downtrodden,” I muttered.
Like he would even know what the downtrodden looked like.
I guess that’s what the downtrodden would say.
17
I decided to ignore Raf’s comments. Maybe I was acting like the downtrodden, but that was only because I was a downtrodden.
I shook my head. My dad wouldn’t like to hear that.
I decided again to ignore his comments. After all, I’d scored the password to one of their exclusive parties. If I was one of the downtrodden, I would share this moment as the one that changed everything.
The night of the party, I felt the same way Christiane Amanpour must have felt the first time she was allowed to be embedded with US troops in Iraq, except I was now embedded with what could be the biggest scoop inside the Beltway.
I’d been texting Charlotte all day.
Me: Going to the party!
Charlotte: Don’t forget to go through the medicine cabinets. 98% of secrets are hidden there. And if you open the closet and find a giant plastic bag full of fingernails, run.
Me: You thought there would be any scenario where I found a bag full of fingernails and didn’t run?
I did all the necessary things to prepare for covert investigation: I programmed my phone to record sound with the touch of a button, video with the touch of another one. I brought a notebook and pen in my purse, in case I ran out of battery and there was a power outage or something. I wouldn’t be caught unprepared.
